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"Ten out of 12 major water suppliers in the UK admitted to using “dowsing” or “divining rods” to detect underground water, a method which has been widely discredited by modern science. The rods were once believed to twitch in the hands of a “diviner” to point to underground reserves, a method which is believed to date back to the 15th century.

The practice is used by engineers working for most of the largest water companies, including Severn Trent, United Utilities and Thames Water."

"Ten out of 12 major water suppliers in the UK admitted to using “dowsing” or “divining rods” to detect underground water, a method which has been widely discredited by modern science. The rods were once believed to twitch in the hands of a “diviner” to point to underground reserves, a method which is believed to date back to the 15th century.

The practice is used by engineers working for most of the largest water companies, including Severn Trent, United Utilities and Thames Water."

Dowsing! Muggles are just so cute to think that something like that would work. Even a first year can do an aquada kedevra spell

__________________I've always believed that cluelessness evolved as an adaptation to allow the truly appalling to live with themselves. - G. B. TrudeauA person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. - Kay, Men in Black.Enjoy every sandwich. - Warren Zevon

Not just the UK.
In the US, dowsing for utility locates around construction sites happens quite often. A guy in a hard hat and utility company logo orange safety vest hops out of a truck and starts waving bent welding rods around and spray painting lines on the sidewalk.

I have seen or heard stories of power, water, electric, sewer, gas, communications, even fuel lines in a bulk tank farm dowsed, marked, and signed off.

__________________"When you believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer . . . " - Stevie Wonder.
"It looks like the saddest, most crookedest candy corn in an otherwise normal bag of candy corns." Stormy Daniels
I hate bigots.

__________________/dann"Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx

Not just the UK.
In the US, dowsing for utility locates around construction sites happens quite often. A guy in a hard hat and utility company logo orange safety vest hops out of a truck and starts waving bent welding rods around and spray painting lines on the sidewalk.

I have seen or heard stories of power, water, electric, sewer, gas, communications, even fuel lines in a bulk tank farm dowsed, marked, and signed off.

I have used utility locating services countless times, calling them in for various stages of various construction sites. I have never once witnessed them using dousing rods of any sort. Although they have been wrong on occasion, even with their high tech equipment.

The one dousing incident I did see was rather different.

We were digging a deep (20 ft.) building excavation which required a soil nail wall as a temporary retaining wall. For those unfamiliar with the process, this involves digging down in stages, about six feet deep at a time. At each stage long holes about 3" dia. (ranging from 10 to 25 feet or so) are drilled horizontally into the exposed cut, then a length of heavy rebar is inserted into the hole and grouted into place. Finally a skin of heavy welded wire fabric is placed to cover the face of the cut, which is then sprayed with a layer of concrete several inches thick, and large metal plates are slid onto the rebar and held in place with bolts to secure the wire reinforced concrete skin.

At the start of any such installation it is necessary to ensure that the drilling does not damage any immediately adjacent utilities. On one job we knew that there was a 12" water main somewhere close to the reach of the longest rebar pins scheduled for that section of the SN wall.

The utility contractor we were using on that site had installed that water main a couple of years earlier, so we asked them to have it located for us so that we could be sure to miss it.

The foreman who had installed that pipe told us that would be no problem ... and this is when the welding rods came out.

We confirmed that the marks he had painted were not going to be within reach of any of our soil nails.

We managed to drill four holes. The fifth started gushing water, and shut down the water service to several of the university's adjacent multi-story lab buildings. The pipe in question was, it seems, about 8 ft. closer to the excavation than where he had located it.

Matters degenerated quickly from that point.

The water main in question had been turned over to the county water service well before these events.

They wanted to see the documentation for the locating services who had been notified. Only long years of mutual business contact between the county and our utility contractor avoided significant legal action. The contractor bore all the expenses incurred by the incident, which were considerable, and that is beyond the cost of repairing the water line.

The county also made them hire an independent locating service which provided actual physical location in three dimensions of all the remaining utilities, including the rest of the water lines (There were others on other sides of the building footprint), gas, electric, sewer, storm, etc., which were shown on the site utility drawings to be within 15 ft. of the longest possible soil nail. This was a non-trivial form of locating which involves using a high pressure air drill that can drill down to the pipe without damaging it. It is very expensive, and very time consuming ... and was what they had been trying to avoid in the first place.

__________________"It never does just what I want, but only what I tell it."
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

__________________"The Conservatives want to keep wogs out and march boldly back to the 1950s when Britain still had an Empire and blacks, women, poofs and Irish knew their place." The Don That's what we've sunk to here.

Not just the UK.
In the US, dowsing for utility locates around construction sites happens quite often. A guy in a hard hat and utility company logo orange safety vest hops out of a truck and starts waving bent welding rods around and spray painting lines on the sidewalk.

I have seen or heard stories of power, water, electric, sewer, gas, communications, even fuel lines in a bulk tank farm dowsed, marked, and signed off.

I've seen a guy dowse for an underground power cable and he was right on the money. Don't know what that means in the big picture, but I'm inclined to think that there may be something to it and don't reject it out of hand.

I've seen a guy dowse for an underground power cable and he was right on the money. Don't know what that means in the big picture, but I'm inclined to think that there may be something to it and don't reject it out of hand.

Because "We don't encourage our workers to try and fix infrastructure problems with magic, we just let them" is so much better.

This.

If I started casting runes in order to try and figure out why there was a bug in some code I would expect to get sacked.

Originally Posted by jakesteele

I've seen a guy dowse for an underground power cable and he was right on the money. Don't know what that means in the big picture, but I'm inclined to think that there may be something to it and don't reject it out of hand.

How could or would they continue this practice if they are consistently wrong or no better than chance?

Confirmation bias could well be the whole explanation of perceived accuracy rates higher than chance, but I think it's possible some of them may essentially be letting their unconscious mind make its best guess, based on past experience and all the data entering their senses (which will be much more than is being brought to the attention of their conscious awareness). That might give a hit rate which is genuinely better than chance.

__________________"If you trust in yourself ... and believe in your dreams ... and follow your star ... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things" - Terry Pratchett

Shouted at the radio this morning. John Humphrys had a scientist in who was far too polite about it all, especially when Humphrys told his own anecdote - basically he had to find a source of water on his own farm as a well had run dry and a diviner found one which they then ran a pipe from. Scientist talks about coincidence and no known mechanism, ideomotor, unconscious clues etc.

Humphrys then ups the ante (yeah there's always more impressive detail to add) and states that sometime later they had a leak in that water supply and a diviner successfully located it. He went on and on about it being a 4 acre field so no way it was chance and all the scientist came back with was that divining failed controlled tests.

I was screaming at the radio that it wasn't a spot in a 4 acre field, it was a spot along a straight line, as they all knew where the source was (having 'miraculously' found and dug it out some time earlier) and the output and had laid the sodding pipe between them in the first place. Not only that but if it was a significant enough leak to have been noticed in the first place, there were probably visual cues!

Shouted at the radio this morning. John Humphrys had a scientist in who was far too polite about it all, especially when Humphrys told his own anecdote - basically he had to find a source of water on his own farm as a well had run dry and a diviner found one which they then ran a pipe from. Scientist talks about coincidence and no known mechanism, ideomotor, unconscious clues etc.

Humphrys then ups the ante (yeah there's always more impressive detail to add) and states that sometime later they had a leak in that water supply and a diviner successfully located it. He went on and on about it being a 4 acre field so no way it was chance and all the scientist came back with was that divining failed controlled tests.

I was screaming at the radio that it wasn't a spot in a 4 acre field, it was a spot along a straight line, as they all knew where the source was (having 'miraculously' found and dug it out some time earlier) and the output and had laid the sodding pipe between them in the first place. Not only that but if it was a significant enough leak to have been noticed in the first place, there were probably visual cues!

Aaaarghh, come on Radio 4, you're supposed to be better than this!

I sometimes download the Today program to listen to while walking the dog. I won't this evening, one gets funny looks walking the darkened streets yelling abuse at no-one.

When the water pressure reducer on the edge of my lot failed, the utility came out and told me I had to dig up the line between the reducer and the house. One of the men produced a divining rod which looked like a telescoping antenna with a hand grip then proceeded to wave it around and mark the location of the water line. I couldn't help but notice that he marked a direct path between the electric meter and the junction box and told him so. He then gave me the number for the utility people who would properly mark the water and power lines buried in my yard; which they did the next day.

I wrote to the utility and asked them if they allowed their employees to haphazardly mark out the locations of water services using such foolhardy methods. I told them I could have been killed had I dug where their man told me the water line was. They wrote back saying it was not their policy to use a dowsing rod. No ***** !

Because of this thread, yesterday I asked one of my customers who is in the business of installing underground gasoline tanks and dispensers here in the U.S.A. if he ever saw anyone dowsing when they had to check for water mains, utility lines, etc. At first he said he did see it from time to time, and seemed to know what I was referring to. But after I expressed surprise and called the practice B.S., he claimed to misunderstand what I was talking about and said metal detectors and such were always used. Hmmm.

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